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EIGHTY-SIX | OAK AND IVY
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The Broken Alpha EIGHTY-SEVEN | THE LENGATHUL
ElijahA tentacle wound around Elijah’s leg. The world moved in slow motion around him as he was dragged below. His mind coughed up a series of half-forgotten rhymes, each one more disturbing than the last: swim up, fly down, don’t turn around, toe to toe, heart of woe, don’t look at the creature below…He gulped in his last breath of air, and then the water swallowed him whole. It was dark as pitch; something slimy writhed against his skin, somehow both wet and sticky. A glimmer of white broke through the darkness, snake-like but puckered with suckers. Elijah shuddered, though he told himself it was from the burning in his lungs rather than repulsion at the being that held him.His hair streamed across his face. He scrabbled blindly at it, wiping straggly clumps of it away from his nose and mouth. Not that it would help. Nothing would. He kicked and struggled, but the tentacle just tightened further. If he could just lift his sword a bit higher – Caslein screamed. Elijah had never
The Broken Alpha EIGHTY-EIGHT | A FATE DIVIDED
LilyLips pulled back from teeth, yellow and warped. Blood oozed from wounds, recent and old, dribbling down the creature’s furred chest. Lily’s breath caught in her throat. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t even blink.Time froze around them. Locked in its gaze, her mind flailed for a way out, considering a thousand useless ideas and tossing them aside in that elongated instant. Everything seemed important: her dad’s pulse throbbing violently against her palm, the pull of skin over her knuckles, the way her knees locked and the shallow amount of air left in her lungs. The flicker of a leave overhead, glistening gold in the gossamer sunlight, marked a cool breeze curling through the woods. With it came the stale scent of decay, pungent and rotting as it swarmed Lily’s nostrils.She inhaled, only to exhale hastily, the smell making first bile and then saliva pool on her tongue. She blinked, half hoping that the creature would disappear when she opened her eyes again. It didn’t.Her dad r
The Broken Alpha EIGHTY-NINE | CLAIMED
ElijahSurrounded by darkness, inky and slick, Elijah let go. It was easier here, everything murky in its blackness, than it had been above. He couldn’t quite remember what above was, exactly – only that it hurt. There was pain there, and he didn’t want to feel pain anymore. He settled into his new existence, somewhere between sky and rock, his limbs strewn through water and algae like a discarded dandelion seed. But something tugged at his heart, even in the darkness. It was a painful tug, he thought distantly, but it didn’t hurt. The pain was fuller than that, all encompassing in its fire. Yes – that was what it was. Fire. Hot and bright and comforting and agonising, all at once. With that realisation came a name. A single name that changed everything.Lily.Oblivion tried to claim him, but he had already been claimed, long ago, by her. His mind joined his heart, and together they found veins and muscles and bones. As his body reconnected, his skin started to feel.The air was cold
The Broken Alpha NINETY | DAFFODIL
LilyThe portal loomed ahead. Jared had found his way back to it effortlessly, taking turns that made no sense and going back on himself just as much as he’d walked forward. A part of Lily was glad that he’d found them and taken them captive, even though her shoulder throbbed and blood still seeped into the hastily-made bandage wrapped haphazardly round it. Without him, she doubted they would ever have found their way to Red Ripper’s magical territory.She squinted up at the trees. Half of their branches were bare, gnarled and knobbly as aged fingers. The others were too deep into autumn for the season, painted in dark reds and fading browns. One drifted to the ground in front of her, and she reached for it. It fluttered onto her palm and crumbled into ash. “Hurry up,” snarled Jared, saliva flicking from his distorted snout. It was almost impossible to make out the words, so thick and throaty was his voice. Rather than individual sounds, it was a growl split into syllables that hardl
The Broken Alpha NINETY-ONE | NOCTURNAL
LilyThe scent of death hung heavy in the air. Lily pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth, begging the rising vomit to stay down. It was all too familiar: the eerie sense of being a step out of time, the little cabins, the pack house looming over everything at the centre of the realm.Worst of all were the flowers. When she’d been here before, they’d been alive – so alive that they’d looked unreal, the petals too bright, too plump, and the leaves unfurling from their stems glossy green and shimmering with thin silver hairs. Now, they curled in on themselves, wilted and withered, the leaves and petals turned grey and hanging limply upon the brown grass.Something was wrong. “Remind me of the plan again, Lils?” Her dad wrung his hands together, his pulse jumping beneath his jaw, sweat slicking his brow. She sighed. They’d been over it a thousand times – and there wasn’t that much to remember at all, really – but clearly he needed something to focus on, something to distract him
The Broken Alpha NINETY-TWO | PARCHMENT
ElijahThe journey back to Sea Pine passed Elijah by in a daze. Fogged with heartache and physical pain, he dragged himself along behind Caslein in silence. He watched, unable to even help, as he fought off slews of mossmen – more often than not grabbing Elijah and slinging him over his shoulder, running away with his Alpha bouncing against his back like a sack of potatoes. Elijah felt about as useful as one.Everywhere they went, the leaves were wrong. Spring buds dotted the same branches that held crisp orange leaves. Snowdrops and daffodils littered the moss and mulch. Elijah couldn’t bring himself to point them out to Caslein, not after he’d dismissed him the first time. Besides, he told himself, Cas was busy keeping them both alive. Flower spotting wasn’t high on his list of priorities.Their world was breaking. Unnatural magic was splitting into their realm. At night, they saw terrible, distorted creatures – half man, half wolf, stalking through the woods with wet noses, wolven
The Broken Alpha NINETY-THREE | MIDNIGHT AT NOON
LilyApollo dropped the rope clinging to Eryne’s neck. She remained where she was, not even lifting a trembling hand to draw the coarse knots away from the open wound it had rubbed open. Blood seeped into it, staining it dark red.His eyes are evil, Lily thought as he stepped towards her, her heart tying itself in knots and fear sitting heavy on her chest. Blue eyes could be beautiful, but his were alight with the cold fire of lightning and the hard bite of steel. For some reason that was all she could think as she leapt out into the open, her hands curling into half-formed, useless fists. She couldn’t fight him. Then another thought broke through the permeable wall of her mind: I’m going to die.“Lily! Oh, Lily, sweetheart, is that you?” Apollo swung his smug smile around to face her. It made her spine crawl.“It’s me,” she bit out through gritted teeth. Risking a glance at Eryne, Lily caught a glimpse of wide yellow eyes, silent but screaming, before she sidled, as casually as she
The Broken Alpha NINETY-FOUR | RUN
LilyHis mouth was firm, and his seeping breath smelt strongly of mint, but his lips parted in surprise – a gesture that Lily found strange. Apollo was not one to be surprised by anything, and yet she’d caught him off guard.“Kiss me,” she murmured against his mouth, her heart fracturing more and more with every second they were touching. Half frozen in fear and half in self-hatred, she tried to imagine it was Elijah’s lips she could taste. That only made her betrayal all the more potent, turning her heart black within the hollow cavern of her chest. “Gladly,” he replied, his voice thick and throaty. His arms wound around her like a cage, his fingers digging into the thin curve of her waist. The smell of mint overwhelmed her. Teeth scraped against her tongue, dominating even that small space. Memories of being closed in the cell overwhelmed her, made worse by the lingering smell of decaying flowers sitting heavy in the air. Lily thought she might throw up. There was nowhere to hide
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